In a post, Dave Sagarin notes a growing controversy because of AG Herring's decision to switch sides in a same-sex marriage case, based on his personal view that the Virginia amendment is unconstitutional.

George,

You may remember that the Republican-dominated government had passed a law that required that abortion clinics be built to hospital standards -- things like the width of hallways, even down to the type of water fountains. In June, 2012, the Board of Health had approved regulations that would have grandfathered existing facilities -- which the Board of Health had almost always done in the past for changes of this nature. Cuccinelli, a staunch abortion opponent, wanted to use these regulations as an excuse to shut down abortion clinics, and so he told the Board of Health in September that if they persisted with those regulations, and then the Board of Health was sued by anti-abortion activists seeking to make the regulations applicable even to existing clinics, HE WOULD NOT DEFEND THEM.

And so the Board of Health, knowing damn well that they would get sued by anti-abortion activists, caved. They changed the proposed regulations to remove the exception for existing facilities -- a change that was so disgusting to Dr. Karen Remley, the State Health Commissioner, that she resigned from her position as the head of the State Health Department.

Perhaps Ken Cuccinelli was simply exercising his independent judgment about whether the regulations were supported by the law, or perhaps he was substituting his own judgment for the judgment of the Board of Health in bullying them into changing their minds to match what he wanted. I don't know.

Lloyd Snook (Electronic mail, January 27, 2014)